ZTE announced the ZTE Axon Elite today at IFA. The phone is aimed at the premium side of things but after getting my hands on the handset I’m not all that impressed.
The Axon range is yet another sub brand from ZTE who already have the Nubia brand. Axon is designed to be a premium phone range and will target the US, Europe and Chinese markets. I managed to get a little hands on time with the Axon Elite earlier and have to admit I don’t think it feels all that premium.
Picking the phone up I was struck by how light it is, but it isn’t the type of lightweight you can appreciate, instead it just made the Axon Elite feel cheap. Fake leather patches on the rear of the phone don’t help the overall look and feel either. It’s all rather tacky and unfulfilling! Compared to the OnePlus 2, Le Max and even the Meizu MX5 that I have been carrying around this week, the ZTE feels miles behind in the design and build departments.
Gizchina News of the week
My time with the Axon Elite was brief but I did get to try that dual camera set up, it is one of the features that would personally draw me to the phone, but again I wasn’t really left feeling that this is the next step in mobile photography or that it help to elevate the Axon to premium status. Sure the camera is good and takes nice detailed photos, but so do a number of other phones with just a single sensor. Specs for the rear cameras are a 2 mega-pixel Altek camera plus a 13 mega-pixel Sony IMX214 with F1.8 aperture and 4K video recording.
A fingerprint scanner is new to the Axon Elite and it does as you would expect and quite quickly too. The rest of the features read like pretty much any top of the range 2015 flagship does and includes a 64bit Snapdragon 810 chipset, 3GB RAM, 32GB internal memory, SD card support, quick charing, 8 mega-pixel front camera, 3000mAh battery and 5.5-inch 1920 x 1080 display.
Just before trying the ZTE Axon Elite I managed a quick play with a Huawei Mate S and would say that the new Huawei is leagues ahead of the ZTE in terms of build and quality of materials. Sorry ZTE I’m not a fan of the Axon.
More from IFA tomorrow.